Perseverance plays an important role in successful blogging. There will be days you don't feel like writing or don't feel like you have anything to say. But writing is a discipline and requires pushing through and writing anyway. Excellence requires commitment.

Today felt like a chance for the Steelers to reassert themselves as the team to challenge the Patriots. Ben Roethlisberger's career is coming to a close and he won't have this much talent around him forever. But instead of setting up the rematch everyone wanted and was expecting, they will be spending the offseason thinking about what might have been.

So the question I have been mulling for the last couple of months (but not for the first time) is whether to keep blogging or call it quits after 14 years. I think I want to give at least one more try at making it work. Let me give you some insight into why.

If you are like me you probably feel that watching election coverage probably killed a few brain cells. So I am offering a way for you to cleanse your palate and gain some wisdom and knowledge: watch the brilliant Victoria Coates discuss her book David’s Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art at the Acton Institute.

It is a hard thing to accept that some elections should be lost, especially in a country as divided over basic moral premises as our own. But just as the pro-life movement ultimately won real gains — in lives saved, laws altered, abortion rates reduced — by accepting the legitimacy of the republic even as it deplored the killing of the unborn, so today’s conservatism has far more to gain from the defeat of Donald Trump, and the chance to oppose Clintonian progressivism unencumbered by his...

Commodification has led most people to view God as a device to be used rather than an all-powerful Creator to be revered. This also explains our abundant and careless words about him. Is it any surprise that a divine butler would fail to provoke reverent silence? What need is there to rein in one’s tongue if God is merely a cosmic therapist? The god of Consumer Christianity does not inspire awe and wonder because he is nothing more than a commodity to be used for our personal satisfaction...

For some odd reason I had not really listened to the Federalist Radio Hour until just recently. This despite being a huge fan of The Transom and all things Ben Domenech. But I am now tuning in on a regular basis. He has had some fascinating authors on for extended conversations and it is refreshing in today’s soundbite world.
Speaking of that, I just finished listening to his conversation with Heather Hendershot, professor of film and media at MIT, and the author of the new book...